My eyes ache from straining not to cry. At some point this afternoon, I realized that the only child to whom I would ever give birth turns thirty-three on the morrow.  Over two thousand miles from the Airbnb in which I sit, my little boy lives his life in a city condo just blocks from Lake Michigan.  I can hear his voice; and with a strain on technology, I can see a blurred image of his face.  But I cannot hug him.

I spent the day fooling around here and there on the coast.  I fixed breakfast in a rudimentary kitchenette and then took myself to the Chit Chat Cafe.  My son called as I circled the block looking for a parking space.  As with most of our conversations, we touched on both light and deep subjects as car after car tarried by my window.  They gestured; I shook my head; they drove past.  Eventually, we said goodbye and I walked towards the cafe.  

A young man crouched on the sidewalk.  Before him, an array of paintings formed a square.  I watched as he started on a new piece, with spray cans and a bent paper cup as a guide.  He made thin lines with the tines of a plastic fork.  As I stood there, a group ascended the stairs to the cafe and one man said to another, “Are you here for the chit-chat or the coffee,” and the artist met my eyes.  We both chuckled, softly, simultaneously.  

Did that sound pretentious to you, I asked.  He smiled.  I don’t think he’s from around here, he allowed.  You can tell.  The tourists make jokes about things we don’t necessarily think are funny.

I told him that I liked his work.  He said, Please, take one.  I demurred.  I’d want to pay you for it, I said.  He shook his head.  You stopped and looked, he remarked.  That’s payment enough.  Many people walk by like I’m invisible.

I picked two, one to send to my boy in Chicago, and the other for my friend Rachel.  I handed him a bill from my wallet and he thanked me.  We chatted for a few minutes.  He told me he had been named for his Mexican grandmother’s surname, Cruz.  It means ‘cross’, he told me, just in case I might not have known.  

I took his works back to my car.  As I returned, three women and their dogs stood in front of Cruz, who had selected a painting from the sidewalk and handed it to one of them.  She thanked him and continued along the path, as I climbed the stars to the Chit-Chat Cafe, where a smiling barista made me a truly superb Americana.

It’s the seventh — but somewhere, two thousand miles from here, the eighth — day of the one hundred and twenty-seventh month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.